Chapter 1
MONDAY: 5.35 P.M.
CENTRAL LINE
In the darkness of the underground, among the bats and the
spiders and the rats, another train thundered down a neighbouring
tunnel.
People read their newspapers. Some tried the crossword. Two
kids argued over who was having the last Haribo. A woman
shuffled in her seat and dropped her folder of papers. They
splayed out over the floor. Letters from clients. Telephone
messages. Conference notes. Doodles on a pad. A day’s work.
A speaker in the corner broke the silence. ‘Ladies and
gentlemen. The delay we’re experiencing is due to a broken-down
train up ahead at Holborn station. We apologise for any
inconvenience caused.’
Passengers kept on reading. Delays like this were common on
the Central Line.
The lights of the carriage flickered again. There was an
electrical kind of buzz, more flickering, causing shadows to chase
around the carriage, and then . . .
Darkness.
The woman on the floor kept scrabbling around, trying to
collect up her work. Blindly her hands swept over the dirty floor,
5
fishing for bits of paper. She was grabbing anything now and
stuffing it into her briefcase. She felt nervous; she hated being
trapped in between stations. And now in darkness too.
‘It’s so annoying!’ someone said.
‘We’ll be off soon, don’t worry about it,’ said another.
Then silence.
Another announcement. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry to
have to inform you that we’re experiencing an electrical fault.
I’m sure we’ll be able to fix it and will be on our way again soon.
In the meantime, let me—’
The speaker clicked, buzzed and then fell silent.
Nothing. No light. No sound. No help.
People started chatting to one another quietly, trying to ease
the tension.
‘Always happens on the way home, doesn’t it? Never on the
way to work!’
‘Typical!’
‘You’re right. We’ll be off soon, though.’
‘Yeah, don’t worry about it, luv.’
‘I never said I was worried. Just bored.’
Anonymous conversations in the dark.
One solitary emergency light above an exit door flickered on.
Like a candle flame it brought a momentary comfort to the
people around it.
One by one, other emergency lights blinked wearily into
action, offering just enough brightness to read by. The
conversations became unnecessary and passengers settled back
into their private worlds of books and papers.
And then it happened.
One person saw it first.
She screamed – a piercing, chilling scream that ran right
through everyone like a burst of cold air. People leapt up.
‘What?’
‘What’s wrong?’
6
Confusion began to sweep through the packed train.
‘What the hell was that for?’
‘THERE!’ she yelled. ‘Out there! At the window! Look!’
Everyone turned their heads in the direction she was
pointing.
There was a face.
In the tunnel outside, appearing through the shadows.
A lank, pale face, its cheek pressed up against the glass.
Distorted and dribbling. Rings of swirling gases circled its head.
Screams spread through the carriage.
The hideous face peeled itself off the window, leaving a foul
trail of cloudy dribble on the glass, like green and yellow algae.
The glowing plasma that encircled it intensified as it contorted
and puckered up to break into a gruesome smile. The sickly grin
exposed brown, rotting teeth. Its cracked and bloodied lips
widened. And kept widening. Soon they revealed a gaping hole
in the centre of the face, towards which the dark, lifeless eyes
now seemed to sink downwards. Features blending like smoky
images.
On and on the mouth widened, jaw dislocating, eye sockets
sinking yet further down into the black. Then, when the mouth
could extend no more, and the void seemed vast, it spewed out a
rank mixture of maggots and cockroaches. They hurtled at the
window, some sticking to the mucousy dribble, others rattling
against the glass like hailstones and scurrying in every direction,
intent on finding a way in.
The rattling rose to a deafening din and the window finally
gave way. Lethal shards of jagged glass launched in every direction.
Flesh was pierced. Blood was pouring. The plague of beetles and
lava began to gnaw away at passengers’ faces. Like piranhas they
worked, as their startled victims struggled frantically to brush
them off, screaming and crying.
The thing at the window was now inside.
It scoured the seats. A mottled and congealed face. A mouth
7
now shrivelled, black and pursed. A body engulfed in a dark,
swirling cloak that crawled with beetles. A dirty white shirt, open
at the neck, revealing skin that peeled from the bone, like an old
carcass for dogs. And a strange gaseous plasma that encircled it,
merging the edges of its body with the rank air around it.
Suddenly, out of the black folds of dirty cloth, a grey, skeletal
hand appeared. The fingers seemed dislocated and worn. Stippled
bones, stripped of flesh. They clutched something tightly.
Polished wood. Metal fixings. Shiny barrel.
It couldn’t be.
It was.
A seventeenth-century duelling pistol.
There was a deafening crack, which echoed around the
carriage. The thunderous shot had been released in the direction
of a businessman, cowering in the corner. He’d taken the bullet
clean through the neck. His suited body slumped to the floor,
spurting blood across the faces of the petrified onlookers. The
ghostly apparition let forth a blood-curdling laugh of victory and
reached down to the body. With a gruesome snap it broke the
man’s ring finger and pulled it clean from its socket. Right off.
The ghost pocketed the bloodied finger, with its shiny gold
wedding ring still attached. Turning to face the terrified
passengers, now frozen with fear, it raised a hand and began
lashing out.
There was an agonising shriek. The ghost had gouged out the
eyes of a woman watching, mouth open, her body stiff with fear.
She grabbed her face, collapsed to the floor and passed out.
Fodder for the beetles.
Pandemonium broke loose. Deafening screams, frantic
pushing and shoving. Panic blew through the train like icy wind
in a tunnel.
‘Get it OUT! Get it away from me!’
‘Somebody! For God’s sake.’
‘Help me!’
8
Passengers clambered over one another, desperate to get to
the doors. Some tried to prise them open with their fingers, their
skin pressed white against hard metal rims – but they stayed shut.
No way out. The ghost trudged on, deeper into the carriage of
hell, firing off shots and spewing foul insects over everyone.
As it swept past, those who survived could see through their
tears that it was, or had once been, a man, with a ring of rotting
red flesh around his neck – a souvenir from the gallows, where
the hangman’s noose had wrung him dead.
Desperation grew further as people tried to escape through
through the broken window, or slammed their shoes frantically
against other windows. In the rush of bodies, all anxious to get
through the connecting doors into the next carriage, a woman
fell to the floor and was trampled over. She pleaded for people to
stop crushing her, but soon her voice fell silent. Her begging
ceased. She lay squashed in the aisle, her neck broken.
Another loud crack from the pistol. The ghost forced its way
through the mass of terrified passengers at the door and entered
the next carriage along. More yells for mercy. He grabbed the
first woman he found. He lifted her up and pressed her face
close to his. She gagged on the smell of maggot-infested flesh. His
stagnant breath gushed from the black hole in his face. She
retched again. She stared into the black, eyeless sockets in front
of her. Into nothingness.
He parted his lips, grinned, and through the sickly dribble, in
a harsh, guttural voice, he whispered to her:
‘Good day, madam. Your money or your life.’
9